Below is a sermon that particularly resonates with me on multiple
levels. First, it is a sermon delivered by dad to 9/11 victims’
families and national dignitaries (Bush, H. Clinton, Bloomberg, Pataki,
Giuliani, etc) about suffering and what they can do with their very
personal suffering that still exists. It impacted me because I saw
concisely in the sermon the power the resurrection has to those
suffering. Secondly, it was a sermon given at an interfaith memorial
(8 min long) and therefore as a student currently studying presentation
to multiple audiences, I was impacted at both the kindness he had
towards the “resources” of other faiths, but also the honesty and
clarify that he still spoke from his own convictions. This is the way,
to affirm others, and still not lose the distinct Gospel voice that we
deem as so powerful in today’s society. Lastly, it impacted me because
while many others would have used the pulpit in front of so many
political figures to espouse either their own political views, or some
well meaning, yet hopelessly ill-timed, alter call type message- dad
focused on those suffering and in pain and tried to speak to them in
their loss of their loved ones with the message that there is a God,
the God, who knows exactly what it feels like and can therefore relate
to them in their pain. Way to go dad.

Below is the transcribed version of the sermon done by individuals at the White House who also apparently liked it.

As
a minister, of course, I’ve spent countless hours with people who are
struggling and wrestling with the biggest question - the WHY question
in the face of relentless tragedies and injustices. And like all
ministers or any spiritual guides of any sort, I scramble to try to say
something to respond and I always come away feeling inadequate and
that’s not going to be any different today. But we can’t shrink from
the task of responding to that question. Because the very best way to
honor the memories of the ones we’ve lost and love is to live
confident, productive lives. And the only way to do that is to actually
be able to face that question. We have to have the strength to face a
world filled with constant devastation and loss. So where do we get
that strength? How do we deal with that question? I would like to
propose that, though we won’t get all of what we need, we may get some
of what we need 3 ways: by recognizing the problem for what it is, and
then by grasping both an empowering hint from the past and an
empowering hope from the future.

First, we have to recognize
that the problem of tragedy, injustice and suffering is a problem for
everyone no matter what their beliefs are. Now, if you believe in God
and for the first time experience or see horrendous evil, you rightly
believe that that is a problem for your belief in God, and you’re right
– and you say, “How could a good and powerful God allow something like
this to happen?”

But it’s a mistake (though a very
understandable mistake) to think that if you abandon your belief in God
it somehow is going to make the problem easier to handle. Dr Martin
Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from Birmingham Jail says that if there
was no higher divine Law, there would be no way to tell if a particular
human law was unjust or not. So think. If there is no God or higher
divine Law and the material universe is all there is, then violence is
perfectly natural—the strong eating the weak! And yet somehow, we still
feel this isn’t the way things ought to be. Why not? Now I’m not going
to get philosophical at a time like this. I’m just trying to make the
point that the problem of injustice and suffering is a problem for
belief in God but it is also a problem for disbelief in God---for any
set of beliefs. So abandoning belief in God does not really help in the
face of it. OK, then what will?

Second, I believe we need to
grasp an empowering hint from the past. Now at this point, I’d like to
freely acknowledge that every faith - and we are an interfaith
gathering today – every faith has great resources for dealing with
suffering and injustice in the world. But as a Christian minister I
know my own faith’s resources the best, so let me simply share with you
what I’ve got. When people ask the big question, “Why would God allow
this or that to happen?” There are almost always two answers. The one
answer is: Don’t question God! He has reasons beyond your finite little
mind. And therefore, just accept everything. Don’t question. The other
answer is: I don’t know what God’s up to – I have no idea at all about
why these things are happening. There’s no way to make any sense of it
at all. Now I’d like to respectfully suggest the first of these answers
is too hard and the second is too weak. The second is too weak because,
though of course we don’t have the full answer, we do have an idea, an
incredibly powerful idea.

One of the great themes of the Hebrew
Scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. There are all
these great texts that say things like this: If you oppress the poor,
you oppress to me. I am a husband to the widow. I am father to the
fatherless. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so
closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them
as a move against him. This is powerful stuff! But Christianity says he
goes even beyond that. Christians believe that in Jesus, God’s son,
divinity became vulnerable to and involved in - suffering and death! He
didn’t come as a general or emperor. He came as a carpenter. He was
born in a manger, no room in the inn.

But it is on the Cross
that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see,
to our shock that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in
an unjust attack. And so you see what this means? John Stott puts it
this way. John Stott wrote: “I could never myself believe in God if it
were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one
worship a God who was immune to it?” Do you see what this means? Yes,
we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but
we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that he
doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. God so loved us and
hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in
it. And therefore the Cross is an incredibly empowering hint. Ok, it’s
only a hint, but if you grasp it, it can transform you. It can give you
strength.

And lastly, we have to grasp an empowering hope for
the future. In both the Hebrew Scriptures and even more explicitly in
the Christian Scriptures we have the promise of resurrection. In Daniel
12:2-3 we read: Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will
awake….[They]… will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and…like
the stars for ever and ever. And in John 11 we hear Jesus say: I am the
resurrection and the life! Now this is what the claim is: That God is
not preparing for us merely some ethereal, abstract spiritual existence
that is just a kind of compensation for the life we lost. Resurrection
means the restoration to us of the life we lost. New heavens and new
earth means this body, this world! Our bodies, our homes, our loved
ones—restored, returned, perfected and beautified! Given back to us!

In
the year after 9-11 I was diagnosed with cancer, and I was treated
successfully. But during that whole time I read about the future
resurrection and that was my real medicine. In the last book of The
Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee wakes up, thinking everything is lost and
discovering instead that all his friends were around him, he cries out:
"Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead! Is
everything sad going to come untrue?"

The answer is YES. And
the answer of the Bible is YES. If the resurrection is true, then the
answer is yes. Everything sad is going TO COME UNTRUE.

Oh, I
know many of you are saying, “I wish I could believe that.” And guess
what? This idea is so potent that you can go forward with that. To even
want the resurrection, to love the idea of the resurrection, long for
the promise of the resurrection even though you are unsure of it, is
strengthening. I John 3:2-3. Beloved, now we are children of God and
what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he
appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who
have this hope purify themselves as he is pure.” Even to have a hope in
this is purifying.

Listen to how Dostoevsky puts it in
Brothers Karamazov: “I believe like a child that suffering will be
healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human
contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable
fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man,
that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something
so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for
the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes
of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it
not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.”

That is strong and that last sentence is particularly strong…but if the resurrection is true, it’s absolutely right. Amen.